MESSAGE THIRTY-FIVE

A CONCLUDING WORD ON THE OFFERINGS AND THE PRIESTHOOD

This message, which will focus on Hebrews as an exposition of Leviticus, is a concluding word to all the foregoing messages on the offerings and the priesthood.

THE ALL-INCLUSIVE CHRIST AS HE IS REVEALED IN HEBREWS

In the book of Hebrews there are many references to the book of Leviticus, especially to the offerings and the priesthood. For example, Leviticus often speaks of the high priest. No other New Testament book speaks as much about Christ as the High Priest than the book of Hebrews does.

In the book of Leviticus itself we cannot see how great, excellent, wonderful, all-inclusive, and inexhaustible is the Christ whom we offer and enjoy as the offerings. In Leviticus we can see that all the offerings typify Christ, but we do not get the realization and the sense of how great Christ is. No word can express the greatness of the Christ who is all the offerings.

For a revelation of the all-inclusiveness of Christ, we need to come to the book of Hebrews. Let us now briefly survey the aspects of Christ revealed in Hebrews.

The Creator, the Upholder, and the Heir

Hebrews 1:2 and 3 tell us that Christ is the Maker, the Creator, of the universe and that He is also the Upholder of the universe He created. Furthermore, God has appointed Christ to be the Heir of all things of the universe.

The Effulgence of God’s Glory and the Express Image of His Substance

In verse 3 we see that Christ is the effulgence of God’s glory and the express image of His substance. The effulgence of God’s glory is like the shining or brightness of the light of the sun. Christ is the shining, the brightness, of the Father’s glory. The express image of God’s substance is like the impress of a seal. Christ the Son is the expression of what God the Father is.

The One Who Has Destroyed the Devil

“Since therefore the children have partaken of blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who has the might of death, that is, the Devil” (2:14). The wonderful One, who is the Maker of the universe, partook of blood and flesh in order to destroy the Devil, to bring him to naught. In the fullness of time, the Son of God came to become flesh (John 1:14; Rom. 8:3) by being born of a virgin (Gal. 4:4), that He might destroy the Devil in man’s flesh through His death on the cross.

The Apostle and the High Priest

In Hebrews 3:1 we see that Christ is “the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.” As the Apostle, Christ is the One sent to us from God and with God. As the High Priest, Christ is the One who went back to God from us and with us. As the Apostle, Christ came to us with God to share God with us that we may partake of the divine life, nature, and fullness. As the High Priest, Christ went to God with us to present us to God that we and all our case may be fully cared for by Him. Thus, 4:14 and 15 say, “Having therefore a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession. For we do not have a high priest who is not able to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tried in all respects like us, yet without sin.” As such a High Priest, Christ bears us in the presence of God and cares for all our needs.

Note: We hope that many will benefit from these spiritual riches. However, for the sake of avoiding confusion, we ask that none of these materials be downloaded or copied and republished elsewhere, electronically or otherwise. Living Stream Ministry retains full copyright on all these materials and hopes that our visitors will respect this.

Other Reading Online

About Living Stream Ministry

Living Stream Ministry publishes the works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, providing the authoritative and definitive collections of treasures from these two servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. The writings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee focus on the enjoyment of the divine life, which all the believers possess, and on the building up of the church, the goal of God's work with man in this age.

Noise Words

Common words, such as "and", "is", "but", and "the", also known as noise words, are bypassed in a search. The search string, the Spirit & who, would result in an error since who, which stands by itself, is a noise word. The following is a list of noise words:

Ranking

Rank is a value from 0 to 1000 indicating how closely a match scored or ranked against the original search string. Rank values are affected by the following factors:

The total number of occurrences of the original search words/phrases in a portion of a book.

Content that includes the search words in close proximity to each other are ranked above those that do not. Therefore, a portion of a book that has the search words in close proximity may have a higher ranking than another portion of a book that has a higher hit count but the words are not in close proximity to one another. Therefore, we also include a search word hit count for reference.

The rank values are relative to each other. Therefore, it is not possible to interpret the RANK value as a percentage or group the rank values into high/medium/low ranges. Think of rank as a method to order the results for a specific search.

Search Scope

Include All Word Forms

This option breaks out the search string into its individual words and generates all conjugations and declensions for each word in the search phrase. A search on the word, dwell, would search for dwell, dwelling, dwelling's, dwells, dwelt, and dwelled.

There is no need to use ^ (inflectional search) or * (prefix search) when using the Include all word forms search scope.

Specified Word Forms

This option searches for exact matches of the specified words or phrases used in the search string. Use of ^ (inflectional search) with a particular word in the search string will broaden the search for that given word in that all conjugations and declensions for that word will be searched. Similarly, use of * (prefix search) with a particular word in the search string will broaden the search for that given word in that all words with that prefix will be searched as well.

Note

Common words, such as "and", "is", "but", and "the", also known as noise words, are bypassed in a search. A list of all noise words is as follows: